The Soldier and the Sorceress
by Queenbean3
Summary: Calhoun loved sleeping over in Blood and Thunder. Unlike her stiff bunk and scratchy blanket in Hero's Duty, there was always a comfy queen size bed waiting for her with soft blankets and fluffy pillows. And, best of all, Sorceress was there.
1. Chapter 1

The Soldier and the Sorceress

Calhoun loved sleeping over in _Blood and Thunder_. Unlike her stiff bunk and scratchy blanket in _Hero's Duty, _there was always a comfy queen size bed waiting for her with soft blankets and fluffy pillows. And, best of all, Sorceress was there.

The beautiful Bad Guy was a great companion to share a bed with. When they were alone in the bedroom, Calhoun loved to pounce on her, grab her around her slim waist and tackle her down to the mattress. Sorceress would laugh and squirm playfully and Calhoun would nuzzle her neck and kiss her lips and grin as the tips of her pale blue ears turned pink.

Then when they were both tired from their one-sided wrestling match they would fall asleep in each other's arms. Sorceress liked to cuddle and Calhoun was happy to oblige. She was warm and soft with curves in all the right places, and her long thick mane of silky blue waves was always fun to tangle her fingers in. Their preferred sleeping position was with Calhoun holding Sorceress from behind. Calhoun liked this because she could bury her nose in her partner's hair and breathe in the smell of her shampoo and kiss her shoulders and the tips of her ears and rub her fingers up and down the smooth skin of her stomach.

Sorceress enjoyed being touched and kissed and feeling Calhoun's warm, strong body pressed against her back and stroking the firm muscles of her arms with her fingers. She would sigh and giggle and purr, basking in her partner's affections. The first to fall asleep was usually Calhoun. As she drifted off, Sorceress would roll over to look at her and caress her hot cheeks and brush the messy blonde bangs from her eyes and leave feathery kisses all over her face. She would tell her she was beautiful over and over and call her 'Tamora', a privilege reserved only for her and only when they were alone.

When morning came Calhoun would wake up first and watch Sorceress sleeping. She would stroke her tangled hair and cheeks, smiling softly when she stirred or made a sound. If she could she would lay there and admire her all day, but that would be boring and time was short before the arcade opened. So she would wake up her sleepy, complaining girlfriend with kisses and cuddles and call her cute nicknames like 'doll face' and 'sweet cheeks'. If that didn't work she would tickle her until she laughed so hard she couldn't breathe.

Sorceress would pout over having to wake up so early, and Calhoun would grin and wrap her up in a tight embrace. They would lounge there on the bed like that for as long as possible, just enjoying each other's company and wishing they didn't ever have to be separated. They would usually plan their next meetings and talked about what they would do and where they would go that night.

And then all too soon it was time for Calhoun to go back to her game. Sorceress always went with her to the exit, holding her hand or her arm as they followed the path through the forest. Calhoun would carry her cruiser over one shoulder. She always brought it over when she came to visit so they could fly side by side, but she never used it when it was time to leave. That would end things too quickly and neither of them wanted that.

"Do you really have to go?" Sorceress would say when they got to the terminal. "It feels like you just got here."

Calhoun would smile and brush her long blue bangs aside to cup her cheek in her gloved hand. "Cheer up, babe. It's only until the arcade closes again. I'll be back before you even notice I'm gone."

Sorceress would smile back and lean in until their foreheads were touching. "I'll come to meet you," she would say, gazing deeply into her eyes and keeping her lips a breath away from hers. "You know I don't like to sit around and wait."

Calhoun's mouth would go dry and her knees would feel just a little shaky. "That makes two of us," she would murmur, pulling Sorceress close and pressing her lips against hers with just enough force to make her squeal with delight.

Then they would say their goodbyes and Calhoun would take the train out of _Blood and Thunder_. She would make her way through Game Central with a smile on her face and a spring in her step, not caring one iota if the people she passed started gossiping. Upon her return to_Hero's Duty_ her men would grin and chuckle when they saw her. She would shut them up with an icy blue glare, then resume her blissful smiling right up until the first quarter alert.

Sorceress would be there to see her when work was over. She would hold her and kiss her and call her cute nicknames and make her laugh. And when they were alone they would go back to her big comfy bed in_Blood and Thunder_ for another sleepover.

* * *

**Author's Note:** The pairing of Calhoun and Sorceress came to me one day while I was wondering why Calhoun rarely gets shipped with anyone besides Felix and Brad. Combine that with me wishing to have her and Sorceress interact somehow and voilà! A crack ship was born! I call it Suddenly Lesbians, but since both parties are also interested in men Suddenly Bisexuals would be more accurate.

I wrote this as a break from **_Beauty and the Bricks_**. It's a fluffy one-shot drabble about a crack ship I made up to cope with some major life-changing stress and cheer myself up. It's also a bit of a challenge for myself since this is my first time writing a same-sex couple. So far it's not that different from opposite sex couple, as far as romance goes. I have some ideas for more short stories involving these two pairing, and I'd like to keep them rated E for everyone.

This _might_ eventually lead to a prequel for my main fanfic, if I can think of some way to make it work with the BATB canon. For now it's just a silly AU crack ship for me to indulge in.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: I wrote another drabble! This one is closer to the movie canon and on the sad side.

* * *

Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun expected male attention. She was designed by men to be appealing to male gamers. The programmers gave her many masculine qualities and put her in charge of male soldiers, but she was still female. Everything about her appearance was intended for sex appeal. With her perfectly proportioned hourglass figure, icy blue eyes and short blonde hair with messy blonde fringe, she was incredibly beautiful and she knew it.

From the day Hero's Duty was first plugged in she knew it. And because of this knowledge, she found male attention incredibly annoying.

Her tragic backstory made all of this even worse. A Cybug ate the only man she ever loved, Dr. Brad Scott, on their wedding day. The traumatic event was deeply embedded in her memory and replayed itself whenever something triggered her. It was just too painful, and she built walls around her heart to keep other men out.

She became an expert at shutting men down any time they tried flirting with her. Her soldiers all knew her back story and wisely refrained from sticking their noses where they didn't belong. She was grateful for that. It was the rest of the arcade that gave her trouble.

However, while she was a master at dealing with men, she didn't have the first clue about how to deal with other women. She was the only one in her game and had no interest in making friends. Keeping the Cybugs from escaping was more important. She threw herself into her work to ignore the pain of loneliness and loss.

And then, one day, she met a woman who turned everything upside down.

She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman Calhoun had ever seen. Her name was Sorceress. She was a Bad Guy, and much like Calhoun, was designed for sex appeal. Unlike Calhoun she was ladylike and elegant, with elfin features and striking red eyes that contrasted with her blue skin and hair. Her hair was the first thing Calhoun noticed about her. It was long, thick and heavy, and it spilled down to her waist in shiny waves of blue and hung down to cover the right half of her face. Calhoun often wondered what it must be like to have such luxurious locks and how soft and silky they must feel to the touch.

And that made her uneasy. She knew how to deal with men, but women were completely alien to her. Sorceress was the most alien of all with her decidedly nonhuman features and mystical powers. She had strange feelings around her, feelings she thought were long dead and some feelings she had never felt before. When Sorceress spoke to her Calhoun got distracted staring into her deep crimson eyes. Sometimes she caught her gazing at her with a coy smile on her cherry lips, and then she would let out a throaty chuckle that set her heart pounding and stomach fluttering.

At night Calhoun dreaded falling asleep. Sorceress had invaded her dreams with her coy smile and throaty chuckle. She would hold Calhoun's face gently between her hands and kiss her with her sweet cherry lips and wrap her arms around her in a warm embrace, telling her things Calhoun longed to hear but would never ask her to say. Calhoun's hands would move by themselves to caress her smooth, pale skin and run her fingers through her gorgeous mass of soft, shiny hair. She would murmur words she would never say out loud and trace the edges of her pointed ears with her lips and fingers. Quite often this led to intense lovemaking the likes of which Calhoun had never experienced before and doubted she ever would in reality, and when she woke up she always felt empty and dirty and unsatisfied.

And any time she saw Sorceress again the images from her dreams would come back and it took all her strength to squash them down and act like nothing was wrong.

Then Calhoun began dating Fix-It Felix, Jr. and for a while it seemed like things went back to normal. She spent all her free time after work with him. The diminutive handyman was sweet, charming, and funny in ways that neither her lost lover nor her secret crush could have ever been. For the first time she felt safe letting someone into her heart again and she was happier than she ever could have imagined.

But sometimes when she passed through Game Central Station, or went drinking in Tapper's, she would cross paths with Sorceress. And then she would inevitably remember her confusing feelings and strange dreams and wonder what might have been different if she had let Sorceress into her heart.

* * *

Sorceress had always dreamed of finding someone special to give her heart to for as long as she could remember. There was no love interest in her back-story, just a fall from grace and rise to power befitting a Bad Guy of her status. She was a hopeless romantic, however, and dreamt of one day meeting a knight in shining black armor that would sweep her off her feet and carry off in a stormy night.

At first she imagined this knight would be male. But then Street Fighter II arrived at Litwak's Family Fun Center and she found herself suffering from a painfully one-sided attraction to Cammy. It was then that she first considered the possibility that the man of her dreams wasn't really a man at all.

There were women after her, mostly Good Guys, and Sorceress kept her feelings for all of them to herself. It wasn't until she joined Bad Anon in 1990 that she started to talk openly about herself. Being a Bad Guy put her at a disadvantage in every possible way. It was hard enough for her to get dates with men. Going out with women was totally unthinkable and would surely make her a target for even worse bigotry than she faced already.

She went on date after date with man after man. Some were more successful than others, and a few times she thought she found the knight of her dreams, but she was always disappointed in the end. Her friends at Bad Anon encouraged her not to give up on her dream. They sometimes urged her to take a chance by pursuing a woman she admired instead and perhaps find true love there, but she always turned this idea down flat. It was hard enough to be rejected by people of the opposite sex. To be rejected by people her own sex would be even worse.

Then one day in 2012 a new first person shooter game called Hero's Duty was plugged in and Sorceress met Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun.

Her first thought was the knight in black armor had stepped right out of her dreams and into high-definition reality. The sergeant was every bit an antihero, no-nonsense and tough as nails. She was both strong and beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman she had ever met. Her eyes were cold steel and her unkempt short hair was like shining gold. And before she knew it Sorceress was rethinking her decision to only date men.

Maybe Calhoun really was the knight of her dreams. She certainly looked the part with her statuesque build and form-fitting suit of futuristic black armor. But Sorceress wouldn't know unless she got to know her better. So she started hanging around the outlet to Hero's Duty and did her best to act suave and subtle when Calhoun was around. She welcomed her to the arcade and they talked about how annoying men were. Not once did Calhoun ever smile at her, but once or twice she thought she saw a glimmer of warmth in her cold blue eyes.

Sometimes—just for a moment—Sorceress caught her looking at her in a way that seemed very much like yearning. And in those little moments Sorceress smiled and chuckled, allowing herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, this woman might feel some attraction for her, that this woman might even love her the way she had always wanted to be loved.

Now when Sorceress dreamt of her knight in shining black armor it was Calhoun's face she saw when the helmet came off. It was Calhoun who gallantly offered her heart and her sword to her, who kissed her hand and smiled the most dazzling of smiles as she swept her up in her strong arms. Sorceress would sigh and giggle like a schoolgirl every time, pale blue cheeks turning rosy pink as her dashing knight gently brushed the long piece of blue hair away from her eyes and earnestly told her how beautiful she was. Then they would kiss and her heart would flutter like a hundred bats in a belfry.

Everything changed the day Sorceress first saw Calhoun dating Fix-It Felix, Jr. In an instant all her hopes and dreams were dashed to pieces. Her affections had been unrequited after all, and her beloved knight had given her heart to someone else. Heartbroken once again, Sorceress retreated to her castle and cried into her pillow.

When she ran out of tears she used her powers to throw a magic tantrum to end all tantrums. The spirits of darkness summoned by her anguish ran completely wild and an actual lake of putrid green slime poured out from her. When she had exhausted her powers she stayed catatonic in her pool of stinking misery, and her frightened servants and co-workers feared that she would be too miserable to do her job and their game would go Out of Order.

It was her friends from Bad Anon who finally got through to her. Neff was the one who dragged her out of the slime, Satine washed her clean and gave her a shoulder to cry on, and Zombie offered profound words of wisdom and hope. With their help Sorceress slowly but surely returned to her former self and her game was not unplugged after all.

She got back into the dating game and resumed her search for the knight of her dreams with renewed energy. Just because her knight was not Calhoun didn't mean her knight didn't exist. Surely that person was still out there. She would keep looking until she found him or her, even if it took another 25 years.

But sometimes when she passed through Game Central Station, or went drinking in Tapper's, she would cross paths with Calhoun. And then she would inevitably remember her old feelings and romantic dreams and wonder what might have been different if Calhoun had let her into her heart.


End file.
